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European History

Johannes Vermeer, "Woman with a Pearl Necklace," c. 1662-65

Envisioning Vermeer, Master of Genre Painting, at the National Gallery of Art

Exhibition explores the Dutch artist’s connections with his contemporaries

Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" is one of the roughly 1,500 works in Gurlitt's collection

The Public Can Finally See Works From the Infamous Nazi-Looted Art Trove

Two exhibitions are exploring the treasures and context behind the cache of “degenerate” art uncovered in a Munich apartment in 2012

Mata Hari (Malay for “eye of the day”) captivated European audiences with her spiritual yet sexually charged performances

Revisiting the Myth of Mata Hari, From Sultry Spy to Government Scapegoat

One hundred years after her death, a new exhibit is putting the spotlight on the dancer’s life and legacy

A woodcut from a 1720 history of "witches and wizards"

How New Printing Technology Gave Witches Their Familiar Silhouette

Popular media helped give witches their image

The British Museum was the first free, public natural history museum in the world—but its creator, Hans Sloane, was intricately connected with the slave trade.

The British Museum Was a Wonder of Its Time—But Also a Product of Slavery

A new book explores the little-known life and career of Hans Sloane, whose collections led to the founding of the British Museum

One of the excavated burials in Drawsko, Poland showed a skeleton with a sickle placed over its neck, likely to prevent the dead from rising again as the undead.

Burials Unearthed in Poland Open the Casket on The Secret Lives of Vampires

What people actually did to prevent the dead from rising again was very different than what Hollywood would have you think

Fear not: Though it was recently found that red squirrels can harbor the leprosy bacteria, there hasn't been a single confirmed case of the disease in the UK in 200 years.

New Research

Are Viking Squirrels to Blame for Infecting England with Leprosy?

It’s possible, say researchers who found that medieval strains of the disease may have come to Great Britain in the rodents’ fur and meat

Anti-Nazi protest outside Deutsches Haus, Aug. 1938

History of Now

The Nazis’ Plan to Infiltrate Los Angeles And the Man Who Kept Them at Bay

A new book explores the deadly and nefarious plots designed by Hitler and his supporters

Reaching the summit of the Matterhorn made Annie Smith Peck well-known.

Three Things to Know About Pants-Wearing Mountaineer Annie Smith Peck

Peck wasn’t wealthy and her family, who did have money, didn’t approve of her globe-trotting, mountain-climbing, pants-wearing lifestyle

Virginia Tech, whose Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) was instrumental in bringing the festival to fruition, exhibited on Day 1 a cutting-edge robotic fabrication system.

These Collegiate Innovators Are at the Vanguard of Technology and Art

A massive three-day festival spotlights the achievements of the Atlantic Coast Conference

Whaling captured the popular imagination.

The Real-Life Whale That Gave Moby Dick His Name

Mocha Dick had encounters with around 100 ships before he was finally killed

Nicholas Culpeper fought against the medical establishment of the time by taking the radical action of writing in English, not Latin.

How Nicholas Culpeper Brought Medicine to the People

His 17th-century text is still in print today

Eight hundred pounds of dynamite exploding.

The Man Who Invented Nitroglycerin Was Horrified By Dynamite

Alfred Nobel–yes, that Nobel–commercialized it, but inventor Asciano Sobrero thought nitroglycerin was too destructive to be useful

The remnant's of Kepler's supernova imaged with modern instruments.

How a 1604 Supernova Presented a Challenge to Astronomers

The supernova provided proof to Galileo, Kepler and others that the heavens were not fixed–although they were wrong about what caused the bright star

Part of Blade Runner's enduring appeal are the questions it poses about the nature of humanity—should replicants have the same rights as humans?

Are Blade Runner’s Replicants “Human”? Descartes and Locke Have Some Thoughts

Enlightenment philosophers asked the same questions about what makes humans, humans as we see in the cult classic

Le Corbusier's vision for cities profoundly influenced New York, though never to the degree that this concept (originally designed for Marseille, France) was ever built.

How a Controversial European Architect Shaped New York

Le Corbusier’s ideas arguably helped shape the city more than his own designs

A modern mocha

Your Mocha is Named After the Birthplace of the Coffee Trade

The port city of Mocha, in Yemen, was once a vast coffee marketplace

The historic Coplay Cement Company kilns used in the 1890s.

The Modern World Depends on Humble Cement

Portland cement is a key ingredient in one of the world’s most common materials

The ice cream cone came to the attention of American audiences at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

The Amazing, Portable, Edible Ice Cream Cone

Unlike foods that came before it, ice cream in a cone could be eaten on the go–without a spoon

Cheers!

Cool Finds

Did Lager Beer Originate In South America?

Residue from 1,000-year-old pots suggests people in Patagonia were fermenting beverages with lager yeast well before the Bavarians

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